Moving towards a New Paradigm for Woody Detritus Management

Woody detritus has become an important focus of many scientific and management questions in forests. Perspectives of the role of this part of the ecosystem have greatly changed over time. Today forest managers are moving away from a “blanket” removal of all the woody detritus possible to retaining and even enhancing the amounts in forests. To understand how much woody detritus is required to sustain ecosystem functions, we need to develop a dynamic and specific objective-oriented approach. This can be based on existing data on tree mortality and decomposition, but these will have to be coupled with process and species responses to coarse wood quantities as well as a landscape perspective.